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Connor had thought the whole “witch branding” trend had gone out of style in the seventeenth century.
Apparently, time didn’t pass in high school.
Connor really had never thought much of his birthmark. It never really bothered him. Despite covering the right side of his neck up to nearly his cheekbone, an asymmetrical blob that was only about the shade of a sunburn, he never felt the need to cover it up.
Until other people did.
In elementary school, Connor loved to color. He never put his birthmark in self portraits, but that wasn’t because he was ashamed, it was just that you could barely see it from looking straight at his face. But during their spring play in second grade, Connor drew everything. He was so excited, he was the lead, after all.
And then his teacher, on opening night, nervously asked him if she could add a hood to his costume. She didn’t want anyone to be… uncomfortable.
Connor asked why. He had never even thought of his birthmark as making people uncomfortable. He had never been uncomfortable with it.
She stuttered out words with no answer and shoved his head in the hood of his sweatshirt.
He’d been too bewildered to protest.
It only escalated from there. Snickers and gasps and points and stares that he’d never noticed before he now did, because they were everywhere, all the time. He’d stopped drawing by third grade so he could notice them all, so he could know who thought he was a freak without having to hear them say it.
And then, of course, they started saying it. Connor’s attitude towards the other kids and their sneers didn’t help much either, but he was much more mortified to hear everyone’s crazy theories for his mark than to care what they thought of him. They already had their own ideas of what he was, there was nothing worthwhile trying to change it.
“It’s because he’s a demon’s child.”
“He tried to set a bomb once but it backfired and got him instead.”
“He sold his soul to the devil and that’s the mark he gets to show his eternal service to hell.”
“He’s a witch. We should burn him.”
And at one point or another, Connor thought, why not prove them right?
And so he did.
A witch without any powers was quite the charade, but he made it work. It worked so well, that he had become the school freak.
As it should be.
Evan asked right away. Connor honestly couldn’t have been more surprised. Very few people had ever bothered to ask him, much less bring it up to his face. And this was Evan Hansen.
Evan Hansen, who Connor may or may not have been starting to make friends with.
“Uh, I hope you don’t… mind my asking… um, but… what is your, uh…” he motioned to his neck, fidgeting awkwardly.
Connor was angry at first, his habitual response, but then he realized that Evan had actually asked. Right away, too, not leaving any room for speculation.
“Oh. Uh, well it’s just a birthmark,” Connor told him.
“Oh. Okay,” Evan said and went back to scrawling down his Calculus homework.
Connor was dumbfounded. Well, then. There was no outrage, no questioning.
Connor didn’t know what to think of Evan Hansen.
“You were stupid to wear all black.”
“I literally own no other clothes. None.”
“Oh, fabulous. Now I can go shopping for you.”
“Oh, please god, no.”
They laughed as Evan led them through a field. Connor had begun complaining that he was hot almost as soon as they’d gotten out of the car, even though it was hardly eight in the morning and there was still dew on the grass.
“Don’t worry, it’s not much farther,” Evan assured him.
“How do you know where ‘it’ is? We’re in a giant field and-“ Connor’s complaints were cut off as the tall grasses gave way to one little clear space, right in the middle of it all. “Oh.”
Evan smiled and sat cross-legged on the grass. Connor froze for a moment, struck by the sight of an almost giddy Evan.
Then, once the warm air snapped him out of it, he shrugged off his sweatshirt and sat down next to Evan with his legs splayed out instead of crossed.
“I like coming here,” Evan said quietly. “To think, or to breathe, or just because. It’s the only little spot in all of this chaos that’s clear. I like feeling like that.”
Connor must have been smiling like an idiot. But that didn’t matter.
Evan murmured on and on about everything and nothing, and their little pocket of peace kept his voice steady, sheltered from the wind. Connor listened to every word, recording it in his mind and playing it through his whole body.
There was a moment of silence, and Evan leaned onto Connor shoulder, and he tried to not jump out of his skin.
He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him willingly, purposefully.
Much less… there. Or even near it.
Connor hiccupped once, and soon found himself talking too, going on and on as the world shifted ever so slightly around them, his words clashing tectonic plates in his stomach, the wind whispering through his lips and the sun burning his fingertips. Evan listened intently, though he didn’t interrupt or look at him, and Connor told him everything. Everything.
And once he was done he felt like he could breathe for the first time in years.
He looked down and saw Evan’s hand in his, something he hadn’t felt when it happened but it did and he mentally chided himself from missing it.
And then Evan lifted his head from Connor’s shoulder, the space aching, but it wasn’t long before Evan was back, kissing the ugly mark on his neck, the one that had turned him into a freak, a monster, an outcast.
“Beautiful,” Evan murmured against his skin, before pulling away to meet his eyes. “You are beautiful. You are worthy of love. There’s nothing in you that makes you a monster. Nothing.”
Connor felt tears in his eyes. Today was a day of firsts, indeed. He didn’t know how to respond to that. “Y-you, too,” he stuttered out.
Evan laughed, but it wasn’t a mean laugh. Evan’s laugh was anything but mean.
They leaned against each other, sitting side by side in their oasis for hours and hours, and even when they finally left, their peace came with them.